


The Adventure Of The Farnham Forger (1898)

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 221B [173]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Destiel - Freeform, Forgery, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Minor Character Death, Theft, Untold Cases of Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-05 00:51:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11566902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: A criminal is a victim of a crime, as the dynamic duo travel to the Hampshire-Surrey border to find a four-thousand-year-old pin.





	The Adventure Of The Farnham Forger (1898)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lyster99](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyster99/gifts).



> Mentioned elsewhere as 'the case of Archie Stamford'.

I stared in surprise at the small shop across the street from the restaurant that we were sat outside. Sherlock's description of what I was looking at and the actual sight of it did not exactly match.

“It hardly looks like a crime lord's centre of operations”, I observed, looking again at the small jewellery store. “But then again, I suppose that that might be the idea.”

We had come down to the Surrey town of Farnham because, Sherlock had told me that morning, he had been asked to help out someone. He had been singularly uninformative, but as he was multi-tasking and driving me headlong towards my second orgasm of that morning at the time, I may just have missed that bit. And the train ride down had been quite painful on my poor backside, even in the padded seats of first-class.

“'A. H. Stamford, Engraver & Documentarian'”, I read. “It sounds a bit pretentious to me.”

“Mr. Archibald Henricus Stamford is one of the finest forgers in the land”, Sherlock said calmly, “and I only recently managed to extricate him from the un-tender embrace of the English gaol system for a crime that, for once, he had not been involved in.”

I looked at him in surprise.

“I do not remember that”, I said. He blushed.

“It was whilst you were recovering after Brightlingsea”, he said. “I refused all other cases, but he claimed kinship to your friend of the same name. I naturally took the precaution of contacting your friend to check, and he affirmed that they are first cousins, and have met on a couple of occasions. I therefore felt obliged to offer what help I could, although I did not of course leave your side.”

He took my hand, and I blushed like the teenage schoolgirl that I always became in his presence. I would have worried about my manliness, but it had long departed for a permanent vacation in the South of France, where it fervently denied any association with me. I did not miss it in the least.

“I understand”, I said soothingly. “So what does he need this time? And so soon?”

“He claims that someone is trying to frame him”, Sherlock said, “which given his line of work, makes such an event quite likely. Unfortunately it also means that the list of potential suspects would most likely fill an encyclopædia. Still, we can but try.”

As he must have known it would, the 'we' made me feel all warm inside.

+~+~+

After some coffee and a slice of decidedly sub-standard pie (bakery standards these days were definitely in decline, in my humble opinion), we crossed the road and entered the little shop. I can safely say that it was about as unimpressive on the inside as it had been on the outside. Three people were behind the counter, the first of whom was a smartly-dressed hook-nosed fellow of about forty years of age with slicked back hair and, regrettably, a pony-tail of all things! The young man standing next to him, looking supremely bored as only today's youth can manage; I judged him to be not yet twenty, presumably the owner's son as he had the same hook nose but dirty blond hair that had likely not seen a comb in the past week. Opposite them was a girl who was perhaps slightly older, with her back to us as she cleaned out a display cupboard.

The pony-tailed fellow smiled in delight when he saw us.

“Mr. Holmes!” he beamed. “And you have brought your famous author friend with you. This is indeed an honour!”

He raised the partition, and ushered us into the back of the shop which, to my surprise, was not the living area that I had expected. The man, who I presumed (correctly) was Mr. Archibald Stamford, saw my confusion.

“My shop work takes up nearly all the space here”, he explained, “but I live in Bentley, the next station down the line towards Winchester.”

“I read in the papers that the case against you had collapsed”, Sherlock said. “Lord Hawne evidently decided that the expense was not worth it, given the lack of evidence.”

Our host's face darkened. 

“I would love to know how he got as far as he did”, he said. “Though I must thank you again, Mr. Holmes, for taking the time that you did, what with all your other cases on hand.”

“Tell me about the original case”, I asked. “Uh, for the records.”

“Mr. Stamford here is, as I said, one of the finest forgers in this scepter'd isle”, Sherlock said with a smile. “As you can understand, his services are ever in demand, from both sides of the law, and events that started late last year they nearly proved the end of him. Or at least his freedom.”

“Lord Hawne bought a set of ancient Hebrew scrolls from the Holy Land”, our guest explained. “Thousands of years old, and yes, doctor, they were the real thing. And like all nobs, he wanted to show them off. But he was afraid either someone might steal them, or there might be a fire at Uffmoor – his house in Worcestershire – so he had me make him a set of copies. Good ones they were; took me the best part of six months.”

“Naturally Mr. Stamford had to have the originals here to make them”, Sherlock said, “and one day last October, they disappeared.”

I concentrated on catching up before saying anything.

“Where from?” I asked.

“My house, in Bentley”, the man said. “I live there with my daughter Laura – you saw her in the shop – whilst my son Archie lives here. It's cramped, but I need someone on site, especially with all the stuff coming and going.”

“Were they recovered?” I asked. 

“No thanks to that idiot son of mine”, our host huffed. “He had mis-spelt the address – Upmoor, not Uffmoor – and they had been sent in error to some place up in Derbyshire. The Post Office didn't help; there was a clear return address on it, but they just let it sit there in one of their offices until the police made a fuss. And that was only because Mr. Holmes here suggested such a thing.”

“Unfortunately the London element of the case fell into the hands of the obnoxious Sergeant Winter”, Sherlock said with a frown, “so there was no help to be had there. Luckily however, I have some infinitely more helpful contacts amongst the local constabularies, and a search in Derby yielded the missing papers.”

“Making the copies must be a task”, I said. “I would be afraid that I would somehow mix up your work with the originals!”

The forger smiled.

“I always leave my own tiny mark on any copy, doctor”, he explained, “so I can easily tell them apart if the worst happens. For example, when I was going to hand over the copy to Lord Hawne, I would have shown him a small dot inside one of the letters that was not on the original. To the observer it would look like a random ink-blot, but under a magnifying glass one would be able to see a miniature letter 's' carved into it. That way, any owner can make sure that they always know which is which.”

“And you yourself, I suppose?” I asked. He nodded.

“Archie, the young idiot, could not organize the proverbial knees-up in a brewery!" he sighed. “It was he who dispatched the original papers to the wrong address. I had had hopes that he would follow in my footsteps, but he simply does not have the dedication or commitment needed.”

“And we are talking works of art”, Sherlock said. “You mentioned a renewal of your troubles, sir. What has happened?”

Our host stood and crossed to a writing-desk, which he opened. From it, he extracted a small wooden box with a glass top, which he placed on the table in front of us. Inside was a frankly unremarkable bronze pin. Sherlock smiled.

“Lord Hannan?” he asked, to my evident mystification. Our host nodded.

“The Pickering Pin is Bronze Age, and some four thousand years old”, he said. “Lord Hannan, as you say, purchased it in December, and I was asked to go up to his London house and examine it, to see if a copy could be made. It cannot be insured, because it is irreplaceable.”

“Except”, Sherlock said, “that that is not it.”

I looked at him in surprise. Our host smiled.

“How did you know?” he asked.

“You did not even unlock the desk that it was in”, Sherlock said. “Is this the copy that you have made?”

The forger sighed and shook his head.

“I so wish that it was!” he said fervently.

+~+~+

Mr. Stamford's daughter brought us coffee and tea, and he waited for her to return to the shop before continuing. 

“I went to Brecksett House – Lord Hannan's place in Patriot Square – back in May and decided that a copy could be made, but that it would take time”, our host said. “Bronze is not the sort of thing that one can acquire over the counter these days, after all. Fortunately amongst my many suppliers there is a man who can get his hands on such things.....”

“Who is that?” Sherlock interrupted. The forger looked at him in surprise.

“A Mr. Carlton, who works for the Army up in Aldershot”, he said. “He has a house there – a huge monster of a place, but then, he is married with five children – and he specializes in that sort of thing. His charges are high, but he always comes through. You see, in this case, it wasn't just a matter of obtaining regular bronze. It had to be of exactly the same quality level as the original, as each level of impurities makes a tiny change in the overall colour of the object.”

Sherlock seemed about to ask something else, but changed his mind.

“Please continue”, he said. 

“Lord Hannan delivered the pin to me in person two weeks ago, right in the middle of all my other troubles”, the forger said. “I had the bronze by then and had a rough copy that, whilst it would not have fooled anyone, needed but relatively little more work on it. Unfortunately I was out when he called; Archie was here and checked it in. I was, uh, working elsewhere all that week.”

“We do not need to know where”, Sherlock said, to the man's evident relief. “You returned to the shop, and found that the pin was a fake?”

The forger nodded.

“Some good work”, he admitted. “The thing is, I would have staked my reputation on Lord Hannan being honest – you know as well as I do, Mr. Holmes, that he's the highest of High Church – but he brought me a fake, and my idiot of a son signed for it. I'm for the high jump when His Lordship wants the original back. It will be my word against his, and you can guess who everyone will believe.”

Sherlock pressed his long fingers together.

“Well, the solution seems obvious”, he said at last. We both stared at him.

“How?” I asked at last.

“I shall of course need to dispatch some telegrams to make sure that I am right”, he said, sounding vexed at having to go to so much trouble. “In fact, as Aldershot is only a little way up the line, I think that we may go and call on Mr. Carlton in person. Do you have his address?”

“I do”, the forger said warily. “Do you think that the pin can be recovered?”

“I may have to use somewhat questionable methods so to do”, Sherlock smiled, “but that would not be for the first time, and I doubt that it will be the last. We shall repair to Mr. Carlton's shop in Aldershot and then return here, hopefully by which time I should have had answers to my inquiries.”

+~+~+

“Who did you telegraph?” I asked curiously, as we waited for our train to Aldershot. Fortunately Mr. Carlton's shop was close to the station there, so Sherlock had opted not to take a cab.

“A criminal friend of mine, a Mr. Shepherd”, he said. “Once we know who has the pin, he will be able to go and retrieve it from them. It is fortunate that he is both an associate of and brother-in-law to Mr. Marcus Crowley, so he will oblige. I fully expect the item to be in my possession by tomorrow at the latest.”

“It was the son, was it not?” I asked. I was dubious about Sherlock working for a forger, but I knew that the law of the land extended to everyone, as did the entitlement to justice. “He signed for it. He must have made another copy whilst his father was away that week.”

“I am truly afraid that our client is indeed going to suffer a familial disappointment”, Sherlock said.

Our train came in at that moment, and we entered a first-class compartment for the short journey to Aldershot.

+~+~+

I was sat on a very hard bench at Aldershot station, panting heavily. Sherlock was beside me, totally unaffected by the fact that he had just made me come – twice – in a four-mile journey. 

“I am getting too old for this!” I not-whined. 

“Come on, John!” he said cheerily. “Mr. Carlton's shop is within sight of the station. Let us be off.”

I groaned again, then winced as I stood up. He was being mean to me!

“If I was that cruel”, he grinned, “I would have done not just all that but also have put the cock-ring on you, and not allowed you to come until we had got all the way back to Baker Street!”

I trembled at such an image. Thank the Lord that he had left the thing safely in our special draw in my bedroom, and... what was that thing in his jacket pocket?

Lord have mercy on a poor ol... middle-aged man!

+~+~+

The shop were were looking for was, I had decided, only 'within sight of the station' if one had chanced to have had a pair of binoculars to hand, I decided, as I staggered after my soon to be ex-friend into an unprepossessing hardware store. And I still had to face the journey back with the horny, insatiable bastard. And his cock-ring!

Mr. Carlton was a short, dark-haired man in his forties, with what I considered an intelligent expression (he had to be clever as he had two of my books on a shelf in his shop, and someone nearby could stop smirking right this minute!). I was still recovering, so I did not quite catch the few questions that Sherlock asked him, but we were soon out of the shop and facing the long walk back to the station and a return to Farnham. Fortunately Sherlock took pity on my wrecked state and all I had to cope with was hungry looks and the occasional improper suggestion that had me painfully hard all the way there. And he kept it up as we took a cab back into the town, where he went to the post office to see if his telegrams had yielded a response. He came out smiling.

“Lord Hannan has decided to sell the pin”, he said. “It is to be purchased by a Mr. Lambton, who will be coming down tomorrow on his way to take ship to the United States, and wishes the item to be handed to him at the railway station. Fortunately he had cause to examine the item when it was at Brecksett House, so is confident of its provenance.”

“Might he not be afraid that he would be given the copy?” I asked. He shook his head.

“Lord Hannan will be travelling with him as far as here”, he said. “He is an expert on, as well as a collector of historical artifacts. He would not be fooled by any copy, no matter how good.”

“So unless you can find the real pin before he gets here, poor Mr. Stamford will be devastated”, I said.

He was. Sort of.

+~+~+

We had an early (as in three a.m.) start the following morning, which I assumed related to the fact that Sherlock had received a telegram at our hotel the day before. He had hired two horses, and apparently we were going on a night-time ride as we headed out of the town and took the road west. I wondered just where we were going, until we reached the next village along the road. Bentley, Mr. Stamford's home.

“Is he guilty after all?” I whispered. There was no-one about, but the night felt strangely close around us.

Sherlock shook his head, and led the way into the village and turned left, presumably towards the station from the finger-post pointing that way. But we only got to the River Wey before he reined in, and tied his horse to a gatepost.

“You have brought your gun?” he asked. 

“Yes”, I said, worriedly. “Do you think that I will need it.”

“Perhaps it might be for the best”, was his puzzling reply.

There was a single cottage before the road curved, and I reasoned that this had to be Mr. Stamford's cottage. Despite the early hour, there was what was definitely a candle lit in one of the downstairs rooms, and the shadow of someone moving about.

“The son”, I said, frowning. To my surprise Sherlock shook his head.

“Remember, he sleeps over the shop”, he reminded me.

I was about to press the matter further when the light went out, and moments later the front door to the cottage slowly opened. A slim figure – definitely not our client – emerged and started down the path.

“Your journey ends here.”

Sherlock's voice was terrifyingly loud in the empty night, and the person jumped before taking out what I could see in the almost Full Moon's light was most definitely a gun. I did not hesitate and fired twice, the explosion of my weapon even louder in the dark. The figure slumped to the ground, their gun falling with a clatter next to them. After what seemed like an age, the cottage door opened again and Mr. Stamford himself hurried out. In the moonlight we could all see the figure lying between us, their lifeblood seeping out onto the gravel pathway.

It was Miss Laura Stamford.

+~+~+

I really felt sorry for poor Mr. Stamford, even if he was a forger. Discovering that his own daughter had been prepared to let him go to jail so that she might take over his business.... no man deserved that.

“You knew all along, didn't you?” he said dully. Sherlock nodded.

“Let us say that I strongly suspected”, he said. “In both cases, your son and daughter were at the scene of the crime, and they both had motive. You did not say as much, but after the first case I checked it out, and your late wife insisted that they be named co-heirs to your estate.”

“And she would have let me hang?” he asked tremulously.

“I am very much afraid that she would have done”, Sherlock said. “Indeed, had I not become involved, your son would most likely have suffered some fatal mishap soon afterwards, leaving her in sole charge of the business. And she is a good forger herself, something which, even in in this day and age, is overlooked.”

“My question to your friend Mr. Carlton was a simple one, and he confirmed that yes, your daughter had contacted him about the bronze pin. What she did not tell you was that she actually requested two pins from him, one for you and one for her to create her own forgery. She knew that Lord Hannan would deliver the pin whilst you were away, and that your son would not bother to fully check it, so it was easy for her to arrange a swap in days immediately after, before you returned. And, sorry though I am to say it, society is still disposed to not suspect a female of such a crime.”

“Not I!” he said fervently. “Not after this.”

“I knew that she would most likely keep the real pin away from the business, most likely in her own room at the cottage”, Sherlock said. “Whilst she was at work yesterday, a friend of mine with remarkable thieving abilities broke into your house and searched the place, and it only took him fifteen minutes to find the item, which is slow for him. Because she would not have been expecting it, he replaced it with the second copy, the one that you made.”

Sherlock took a box from his pocket and opened it. Inside was a pin that, to me, looked identical to the fake one we had seen not so long ago. It was hard to believe that such an item had existed for some four thousand years, almost the length of human civilization.

“Some inquiries that I asked my brother Luke to initiate showed that someone matching her description had been hawking the pin around possibly buyers”, Sherlock said. “So I arranged that a buyer offered a large amount in return for an immediate exchange. She realized that her game was up, so decided to take her prize and flee to start a new life abroad. Unfortunately for your daughter, her game ended here.”

“I have no daughter”, the forger said dully.

+~+~+

We left the forger to his shattered family and repaired to the station, where we were just in time to catch the first train back to London. I would like to say that the journey was uneventful, but someone's 'foresight' in bringing a certain item from London ensured that it was not. And it was damnably unfair of Sherlock to insist that I include in this story the fact that yes, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep in the cab on the way back to Baker Street, and had to lean on him to get up the stairs to our rooms. It was high time that Mrs. Singer had a lift installed, if you asked me!

+~+~+

Our next adventure is one of those most requested to be added to the tales of Sherlock's adventures, namely the mysterious vanishing of one Mr. James Phillimore.


End file.
